Enduring global food crisis

Blame game would serve no purpose

Ever since India curbed its wheat exports in mid-May, it has been bracketed with the countries deemed responsible for triggering the global food crisis by exacerbating the supply crunch and price spiral. Pressure is mounting for revoking the ban, notwithstanding New Delhi’s clarification that it was meant chiefly to strengthen domestic food security and keep prices under check. India’s plea that it was carrying out all of its pre-ban export commitments and was willing to help out the genuinely needy countries is also not being duly appreciated.

The main trigger for the current food distress, quite obviously, was the disruption in supplies from Russia and Ukraine, which together account for close to one-fourth of the total food supplies in the world market. Hoarding of grains by many countries and protectionist policies adopted by some regular food exporters have worsened the crisis. Besides, the unsound norms laid down by the World Trade Organization under the agreement on agriculture, which restrain financial support for grain procurement and exports from public stockholdings, also constitute a significant factor that is not being given due weight.

The gravity of the current food crisis, no doubt, cannot be underestimated. According to the World Food Programme, the number of severely food-insecure people has more than doubled to 276 million in the past two years and, more worryingly, the situation is likely to endure in 2023. But it attributes the price spike partly to the rise in the cost of two main farm inputs, fertilisers and energy. The prices of fertilisers have risen by more than half and those of energy by nearly two thirds over the past one year. The United Nations Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, has also asserted that the world food crisis would not abate without reintegrating Ukraine’s food production and Russia’s food and fertiliser output into the world markets. The US recently blamed Russia for preventing Ukraine from exporting 20 million tonnes of foodgrains, which the war-ravaged country was holding on to.

Where India is concerned, it is continuing to export rice without any restrictions and wheat on a selective basis despite having a large population of its own to feed. Its rice exports last year touched a record 21 million tonnes. In the case of wheat, though, the country is the world’s second largest producer, its share in the global trade is normally very little — just around 1 per cent. Only last year, for the first time, it exported about 7 million tonnes of wheat, about half of which went to Bangladesh. Even after imposing the ban on exports, New Delhi has cleared shipments of around 1.6 million tonnes of this staple cereal to meet prior commitments and also to supply it to the needy nations on humanitarian grounds. Interestingly, even the Chinese state media, which reflects the official opinion on key issues, has decried the developed countries’ bid to blame India for the current wheat crisis. In an article published ahead of the recent G-7 agriculture ministers’ meet, it categorically stated that blaming India would not solve the food problem. The developed countries, such as the US, Canada, the European Union and Australia, are the major food exporters and it is for them to stabilise the wheat market by increasing their exports. The blame game would, clearly, serve no purpose.